The numerous faces of the cultural ecosystem services

The assessment of the cultural ecosystem services (CES) still raises many epistemological, ethical and methodological questions. To answer some of them, we propose a methodology combining various methods and distinguishing ecosystem services (ES) performances (i.e. state or trend of an ES) from socio-cultural values (SCV) (i.e. perceived relative importance, how the ES and their benefits matter to a (group of) person(s)) .
We applied this methodology to the municipal forest of Sivry-Rance (Belgium). To assess ES performances, we (1) mapped the touristic infrastructures; (2) measured the forest attendance; (3) used economic valuation methods (contingent valuation, travel-cost, and choice experiments) based on surveys, and (4) determined the importance of the CES for the stakeholders through a participative workshop. The SCV were also assessed during the surveys and the participative workshop.
The ES performances differ from one method to another as differ the SCV among stakeholders. For example, the mapping shows a well-developed touristic infrastructures. Regardless, the contingent valuation reveals that the recreational users are willing to pay several euros in taxes to improve the touristic infrastructures. Their recreational value is high whereas for other stakeholders (e.g. hunters), this SCV is very low compared to other SCV such as biodiversity and direct economic value.
These results show the need to combine various assessing methods to reveal the diversity of CES performances. The recognition of SCV is also essential to acknowledge the different viewpoints of the stakeholders in order to take appropriate management decisions which, for example, reduce potential conflicts between different user groups.